Food allergy testing

About Food allergy testing

Food allergy testing should be guided by a clear history of reproducible reactions to a specific food. Indiscriminate testing produces frequent false positives because IgE sensitization without clinical allergy is common. Skin-prick tests and serum specific-IgE panels are useful confirmatory tools when the history is suggestive; the gold standard remains a supervised oral food challenge in selected cases. Component-resolved diagnostics (for peanut, tree nuts, milk, egg) can help estimate the likelihood of true clinical reactivity and inform decisions about avoidance and oral immunotherapy.